I am a designer and developer and content strategist. I use my experience as a magazine art director and web editor to help publishers, marketers, non-profits and self-branded individuals tell their stories in words and images. I follow all of the technologies that relate to the content business and try to identify the opportunities and pitfalls that these technologies pose. At the same time I am immersed in certain sectors through my content practice and am always looking to find connections between the worlds of neurology, economics, entertainment, travel and mobile technology. I live near the appropriately-scaled metropolis of Portland, Maine, and participate in its innovation economy (more stories at liveworkportland.org. A more complete bio and samples of my design work live at wingandko.com.

Will Apple's iTV Actually Be Samsung's SmartTV?

The narrative seems to have shifted in the interactive television market. For years consumers and tech writers (myself included) have been obsessed with the day that Apple will release its iTV (and debated what it would be called.) But what if that day will never come? What if the fact that Steve Jobs cracked something turns out to have not been enough to enable Apple to deliver the kind of product consumers expect from the company?

The latest shift among Apple watchers towards obsession with a possible iWatch, which may or may not have been stimulated by Apple itself, could signal this very scenario. Far from Apple’s delays with releasing an actual TV (and continuing to “pull the string” on the AppleTV puck) giving Samsung a chance to catch up—Apple has not succeeded in keeping Samsung from pulling away into high orbit. And pulling away it is.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year and then at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung introduced products that are getting awfully close to the kind of all-in-one solution that we have been expecting from Apple. The new F8000 SmartTV with Smart Hub that premiered at CES come in sizes between 46 and 75 inches, with a quad core processor, voice and gesture navigation, and support for apps, internet and social networks. The F8000 also introduces the SmartHub, a five-panel content navigation system that displays live tv, on-demand movies, and the user’s own content library. There are also panels for Samsung’s TV apps and another for built-in video conferencing via Skype.

And at last month’s MWC, Samsung unveiled a new curation product called TV Discovery that allows you to search all of your available streams for programming rather than having to navigate between each separate service as you have to now on most smart TVs. You can also access the app from any Samsung connected device and either watch content or control your SmartTV like a touchscreen remote. The service will be called TV Discovery in most of the rest of the world, but final branding has not been announced for the U.S. market, probably because of possible confusion with the Discovery TV network. Beyond your cable and open internet feeds, TV Discovery will include Netflix and Blockbuster content at launch. Significantly, TV Discovery incorporates machine intelligence to learn a user’s preference based on past behavior. This would mean less searching since relevant content would increasingly be displayed on the opening screen of each panel.

There are a couple of factors at play here, not just Apple’s seeming inability to get high-level content deals done with the cable companies and content owners. Samsung has a considerable advantage in hardware that will be harder for Apple to match much less surpass than in the mobile phone market. Secondly, Samsung has forged a strong alliance with YouTube which has made great strides in advertiser-supported video content. Apple and the cable companies premium paid model may prove less popular with consumers than the free ad-supported model.

The combination of advertising-supported content and machine learning creates the potential for the kind of highly targetable environment that marketers have been dreaming of. In the end, it may be the pull of the advertisers that leads to the rise of the unbundled app model for interactive television.

Apple, can play that game too, and possibly better than Samsung in terms of user interface and user experience—but it’s not exactly the game Apple thought it was playing. And in the world of advertising, Google has a clear advantage. It is possible that an alliance between Google and Samsung on TV could limit Apple‘s maneuvering room in the connected TV market. The next move will probably be Apple‘s. It is expected to release an AppleTV SDK for developers at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) (most likely in early June) for a new TV oriented App Store. I would think this would coincide with the announcement of a new (and hopefully re-imagined) Apple TV set-top device.

If Apple limits its TV product line to a “puck” of some sort (which many people think is the smarter way for it to go anyway) the question will be if it can make an app-enabled TV experience that is significantly superior to the built-in software on Samsung’s SmartTVs to get users to bother to buy and plug the Apple box in. But what if Samsung succeeds at building a user experience that is comparable or superior to what Apple comes up with? Apple could find itself on the sidelines of the next big thing.

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Mr. Kosner, Isn’t it possible there will be even more “players” in that sector than Apple and a Samsung/Google combination? I would suspect at the very least Microsoft will give it a hard look perhaps with Comcast or another major content provider. The key is content and none will be able to move forward without it. Apple should consider buying out Time Warner or at least their content. Or buying Disney. Or buying Comcast or DirecTV. They and only they can afford to do it – regardless of the tie between Samsung and Google. In the end healthy nose to nose competition benefits the consumers anyway.

There are other players, of course, and Microsoft has had a beachhead with Xbox for a while. The big question I have, and that I was trying to pose with this post, is if it’s not actually all about content—there’s plenty of that to go around—but actually user experience. Maybe the company that nails the user experience, with “good enough” content, will be the winner. The tech press has all been assuming that it will be Apple that nails it, but what, I’m wondering, if it turns out to be Samsung, and soon?

The hardware thing is a non-issue for Apple. Between the excellent 27″ plus displays Apple designs and the AppleTV device, Apple is basically already there. Apple, however, sees value in not side-stepping the cable operators and networks, rather than simply re-tooling YouTube, or even iTunes, and throwing that content on, basically, Samsung’s existing TV tech.

Your article shows a huge lack of insight into hardware design for one and I would argue the same for your smarts about digital content.

Samsung will never take a product and run with it long term. How can a company who cares only about the sale ever thrive long term? They only car about the sale. Customer Service does not exist in Samsung’s Dictionary.

The advantage of the “puck” approach is that you can upgrade every year or two for a couple hundred bucks rather than having to choose between a new $2500 TV or dealing with a dated processor, security holes and viruses on your two-year-old $3000 TV.

That is indeed the advantage of the “puck” and why it’s a smart strategy for Apple. Samsung is trying to hedge on this through what it calls the “innovation pack” that’s part of the new SmartTV sets. This is basically a small, upgradable box that slots into the back of the TV through which consumers can swap in more powerful processors as they become available. It would be smart if Samsung prices these aggressively to compete with the Roku or Apple TV alternatives. I don’t think Samsung has released its first upgrade yet, so no indication if this feature really solves the problem or is just technological window dressing.

Yo yo, Samsung innovates. True. At CES they came out with a TV with its own roll cage. That was mad tight yo. You can’t get more rugged than that and thinking outside the box from the typical Apple junk. By putting the roll cage around the TV, Samsung proves they are the leading design and innovator in the consumer tech market. Nuffield said. Holla back if you is feeling me.

I was so flustrated with with the fragmentation in the hd home theater markets “Connected TV market”. Last year I was going to greate a portal for all the worlds of hd home theater. A place where the public can come to learn, compare, and shop for all their hd home theater technology needs. Half the people I know, that have Smart TV’s within in their hd home theater systems, barely use 1/10 of the technology. I was going to use international generic hd home theater domains. This way many companies could consolidate to a one stop portal. I since have given up on this idea, to big for me to handle by myself. Even though I think that a one stop prortal is the fuutre of Internet TV & AV. If their is a corporation out their that believes as I, and would like to run with the one stop portal idea, they may acquire the domains that I was going to use. You may find more information at www.hdhometheater.webs.com The domains are as follows:

The article didn’t even take into account the popularity of ROKU which is in direct competition with Apple’s puck. If the puck type device is the way to go, it is ROKU they need to be talking about. I own 2 ROKU’s and watch all my Shows on my big screen TV’s without worrying about manufacturers.

What a silly premise for the article. Samsung builds an awesome TV, no doubt. And if you are in the market for a brand new TV, it’s a great one to get. But you think because of that, everyone is going to rush out and buy one as opposed to upgrading their existing, perfectly good TV for $99 to an AppleTV? You think people will choose to spend several thousand dollars to get an iTV experience rather than $99 and this is going to doom Apple? Really?

i hate to be a nit picker but didn’t cook say”push the string” the image is way different . access to content is apples problem here not hardware expertise vs Samsung apple will have software that complements the hardware with out a 5 page manual in 5 languages on the operation of the remote alone . i personally pray for apple to free me from the tyranny of the Dolens’s family and not make me pay for games i dont watch ,spy cameras in Snookie’s bedroom or redneck babies and their addled parents. i would love to choose what i want to pay for and i as i said hope apple fnds a way to do that for me

another claim that the AppleTV SDK is expected to come at this years WWDC (just like people were claiming with ZERO evidence last year) where do you come up with this crap? another person speculating on a device they literally know NOTHING about. I hope apple doesn’t come out with an All-in-one tv, its a terrible idea, and im sure the voice navigation is atrocious on these samsung devices (as it will be on any tv that undertakes such a half-baked idea) if you honestly think samsung is going to come out with “the new big thing” that will leave apple on the sidelines, i’d LOVE to get some of whatever you are smoking.